


Worth Knowing

by summersage



Category: Good Omens (TV), Good Omens - Neil Gaiman & Terry Pratchett
Genre: Asexual Aziraphale (Good Omens), Asexual Crowley (Good Omens), Asexual Relationship, Aziraphale had a bit too much to drink during the Reformation, Ineffable Husbands love each other and need each other and balance each other out, M/M, The Fall (Good Omens), The Mortifying Ordeal of Being Known, also my own take on Miltonic angel-sex, angels sense love and demons don’t, my own take on the Fall, small doses of metaphysical fluff and angst, somewhat abstract body positivity toward the end, unspecific references to the problem of human suffering
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-07-26
Updated: 2019-07-26
Packaged: 2020-07-20 12:14:55
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,289
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19992025
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/summersage/pseuds/summersage
Summary: How would he even know if he had Fallen? Would Gabriel and Sandalphon and the others find him and drag him back Upstairs, only to cast him out in some official way? Was there paperwork involved? He glanced at Crowley, who was staring broodily out the bus window, and decided not to ask.The night of “You can stay at my place.” Aziraphale worries that he’s Fallen; Crowley reassures him that he hasn’t.  Pre-Fall angelic unions are discussed from multiple perspectives, and they discover an alternative way of knowing each other.





	Worth Knowing

**Author's Note:**

> _To whom the angel, with a smile that glowed_  
>  _Celestial rosy red, Love's proper hue,_  
>  _Answered. Let it suffice thee that thou knowest_  
>  _Us happy, and without love no happiness._  
>  _Whatever pure thou in the body enjoyest,_  
>  _(And pure thou wert created) we enjoy_  
>  _In eminence; and obstacle find none_  
>  _Of membrane, joint, or limb, exclusive bars;_  
>  _Easier than air with air, if Spirits embrace,_  
>  _Total they mix, union of pure with pure_  
>  _Desiring, nor restrained conveyance need,_  
>  _As flesh to mix with flesh, or soul with soul._  
>  \-- _Paradise Lost_ , viii.618-629

_You don’t have a side anymore. Neither of us do._

Crowley had said the same thing once already, but Aziraphale hadn’t been remotely ready to believe it then. Now, sitting in the dark at the Tadfield bus stop, it struck him like a thunderbolt how absurd he sounded, worrying what Heaven would think of him spending the night at Crowley’s flat when Gabriel had already made it clear he was going to be held terribly, irrevocably responsible for his part in undermining the Great Plan.

Crowley was right. Heaven would never take him back.

Did this mean he’d Fallen? But surely Hell wouldn’t have him, either, not with how equally enraged the demons were against Crowley.

How would he even know if he had Fallen? Would Gabriel and Sandalphon and the others find him and drag him back Upstairs, only to cast him out in some official way? Was there paperwork involved? He glanced at Crowley, who was staring broodily out the bus window, and decided not to ask.

They really were on their own side, whatever that was.

The silence became so comfortable that neither of them seemed to want to end it, even after the door of the flat closed behind them. Aziraphale settled himself on the minimalist sofa, which he suspected of only just having been miracled into existence, while Crowley fetched a bottle of whiskey and wordlessly poured two glasses.

Even though Crowley wasn’t talking, Aziraphale could sense that he was still in that worn-down, contemplative, vulnerable mood that had shown itself in his uncharacteristically gentle words at the bus stop. He sat, sprawling as always, on the other end of the sofa and handed one of the whiskey-glasses over.

Aziraphale took a bolstering gulp and then broke the silence. “My dear, I owe you such an enormous apology that I’m afraid I--”

“You don’t owe me anything, angel.”

“But you were right, and I said so many things I didn’t mean.”

Crowley half-smiled. “Can’t object to being told I was right. But there’s nothing to apologize for. I knew you didn’t mean those things. And I know why you said them.” He sipped his own drink. “Besides, I wasn’t right about everything. Running away wasn’t the answer. I’m glad you stopped me.”

“But I didn’t stop you.”

“I was never really going to go without you. We both said things we didn’t mean.”

Aziraphale drank some more, and contemplated miscommunication and misunderstanding. Crowley had always understood him, sometimes better than he understood himself.

Another sip and he found himself asking, “Do you remember, before the…” _Fall…_ “the Garden, how we… angels, I mean, used to share our whole selves with each other? Join essences and know each other perfectly?”

Even as he said the words, he felt himself flooded with memories of that primal joy, knowing oneself as an individual of unique thought and experience, and then sharing that thought and experience perfectly with another unique being, rejoicing in the full, exponentially-enhanced understanding of difference and sameness to be found in another perspective.

There hadn’t been any paperwork at all, back then.

Crowley only nodded without saying anything, the hard angles of his face looking so wounded and weary that Aziraphale’s pleasant memories crashed to pieces. He regretted bringing it up, but it was too late now not to explain why he had.

“But we… they… angels…” _Was_ he still an angel? “Don’t, anymore. Haven’t, as far as I know, for a very long time. I’ve often thought that perhaps, if the angels hadn’t stopped sharing essences, there wouldn’t have been so many misunderstandings in Heaven. I don’t suppose demons still…?”

For a very long moment, Crowley just stared at Aziraphale from inside the dark of his glasses. At last he said, flatly, “You don’t know.”

“Know?”

“The Fall. How it happened. You don’t know.”

Aziraphale blinked. He’d _thought_ he knew. “We were told that Lucifer, in his jealous pride, attempted to overthrow the Almighty and, naturally, failed. And then, as punishment, he and all his followers were violently thrown out of Heaven and cut off from the love of God forever. I do remember the violence. The first Great Battle. Terribly unpleasant.”

“Bollocks. Nobody was trying to overthrow anybody. All we wanted was-- Ugh.” Crowley dragged his sunglasses off with one hand and massaged his eyes with the other, leaning back into the sofa as if all _he_ wanted was to sleep for another century.

“I’m sorry, my dear; we don’t have to talk about it. I- I shouldn’t have brought it up. We can just--”

“ _No._ ” With a burst of bitter energy, Crowley thrust himself up to standing and looked at Aziraphale full-on, the yellows of his eyes grown so large that there was no white visible. “No, we’re damned well going to talk about it. You and I, we’re _millennia_ past due to talk about it.”

“All right, then.” Aziraphale didn’t think Crowley was angry with him, only with the version of the story he’d always believed was true.

Crowley paced the empty floor. “You want to know what happened? What happened was judgment and censure, on the basis of nothing. What happened was exactly what you’re talking about, sharing our whole selves, only gone completely backwards.

“We did share our essences back then, innocently and indiscriminately. Knowing and being known. How did that wanker Milton put it? ‘ _Total they mix,_ _Union of pure with pure desiring_?’ I’d love to know who told him.

“But you were there, somewhere, you know how it was. We built stars, galaxies, the first threads of time and space and perception, and we _loved_ them, and we shared our different loves with each other, and loved doing it.

“And then, and then, and then…” Crowley was circling the sofa now, gesticulating with his miraculously-unspilt whiskey in one hand. “The more complicated the universe became, the less it made sense, and _some_ of us had the audacity to wonder why. Why make some things less beautiful, less powerful than others? Why were some beings more drawn to each other than others? Why did some beings want to be told exactly what to do, but others wanted to think up new ways of doing things? Why, if you’re Omnipotent and Omnipresent and All-loving, would you make things so bloody _breakable_ and, the more time and space solidified, so bloody _painful_?”

Aziraphale felt his own eyes widening as he watched Crowley stalk around the room. He’d tried so hard, for centuries, millennia, not to ask those questions. He’d failed. Surely he was Fallen already, and the other angels simply hadn’t noticed. “And the Almighty… didn’t want anyone asking those things?”

“Not God! The other angels. Michael, Uriel, all that lot. We didn’t see any harm in letting anyone else know what we were thinking, because, you know, that’s just how things were, then. We’d gone right on sharing our whole selves. Our questions and our doubts and our resentment. That was Lucifer’s thing, the resentment. And his best mates, you know, Beelzebub and so on, mostly they just thought they ought to have been higher up in the distribution of power. For the record, I never cared about that; I just wanted to know _why_.

“Anyway, everyone’s still joining essences all over the place; no secrets, really, so it’s not long before the Archangels know exactly what we’re thinking. And they tell us, tell Lucifer, all high and mighty, that we’re _wrong_. That Creation is exactly as the Almighty wills it, and we must never complain or even think of it as having flaws.”

“So _they_ threw you out. The Archangels.”

“Not just yet. I don’t think they could have, then. But they said our thoughts were wrong; _we_ were wrong. They said we were going to muck it all up, ruin the perfection of Creation. Things were… tense.

“And that’s when Lucifer told us that the Archangels were going to try to alter our essences. Merge with us, open us up, and change who we were so we wouldn’t have those thoughts anymore.”

Aziraphale gaped. “But… That…”

Apparently too tired to stay angry for long, Crowley dropped himself back down on the sofa with a heavy sigh.

“Yeah. To be fair, I’ve always wondered if Old Lucy was lying to us. Or maybe he truly believed it, but he was wrong. Or maybe the Archangels really were going to do it. I don’t know if it’s even possible. The more I think about it, the more I think it probably isn’t. He was probably lying. But back then, I sure as Heaven wasn’t going to take the risk.”

“Then you must have tried to leave?”

Crowley shook his head. “Nowhere to run from something like that. Lucifer said all we could do was protect ourselves. He’d sorted it all out, he said. Found a way we could close ourselves off, permanently. All we had to do was consent to it.” The demon had settled back into melancholy exhaustion, his chin now resting on an arm slung over the spine of the sofa, his bare eyes -- less yellow, now -- gazing at Aziraphale.

“And that, angel, is exactly what we did. Deliberately and permanently cut off our ability to join essences with any being. No more ‘union of pure desire.’ No more self-sharing. All I wanted was to belong to myself.” He finished his glass and reached for the bottle.

Aziraphale could think of nothing to say. The sheer horror of it was paralyzing. No wonder Crowley had never told him; even a day ago, he would have been unlikely to believe it. But now, having seen the other angels’ thirst for war at any cost, he could never be so willfully innocent again.

Crowley, perhaps trying to save Aziraphale from the impossible task of producing a suitable response, asked quietly, “Where were you in all this, anyway?”

Aziraphale flushed a little. “Oh, I’ve never been very important, you know. I was just off in a corner helping with the preliminary designs for language. A couple of minor angels and I were dreaming up verb tenses, I think -- yes, we’d just thought of the future pluperfect; it was delightful -- when someone came in and told us there was a war on, and we’d have to go and fight. And I didn’t mean to do a good job of it, but someone must have got the idea that I had, because next thing I knew after the war was over, they were setting me up in the Garden with a flaming sword.”

Crowley smiled fondly.

“Crowley…” Aziraphale turned the whiskey-glass in his hands, dithering. “I admit I’ve been wondering… That is… if Heaven doesn’t want me anymore, doesn’t that mean…?”

Crowley shook his head. “You have to choose it.”

Should he feel relieved? Was being an angel even anything to be proud of anyway, given how the rest of them had behaved? “Are you sure?”

“You can still sense love, can’t you?”

He could. A general hum of it, running through all the life of Creation, a distant but ever-so-solid surrounding embrace that he knew to be the Almighty, no matter how difficult She might be to communicate with in words, and most of all, a great glowing font of it pouring out in his direction from the being on the sofa next to him. If anything, he sensed love more strongly than ever. “Yes,” he answered.

“Not Fallen, then. Trust me. It doesn’t happen by accident.”

The wash of relief, whether he ought to have felt it or not, was quickly overshadowed by thinking about what all of this must mean for Crowley. “But you don’t. Sense love, I mean.”

“Turns out that’s a side-effect of closing off your essence.”

“And yet, you _feel_ love.”

Crowley smirked in a way that was much more like his usual self. “You’re asking an awful lot of questions, angel.”

“That wasn’t a question,” replied Aziraphale primly.

“Can’t hide it from you, can I? Never could, I suppose. Honestly, you should have buggered off and never spoken to me again, the first time you caught the barest whiff of it.”

“What, back when I told you I’d given away the sword? It would’ve been a dull six thousand years. Not to mention, the world would have ended today.”

Crowley grinned into his whiskey, but Aziraphale had more to say. “Anyway, just because you can’t sense love from others, doesn’t mean it’s not there. God’s love –” The grin disappeared abruptly. “—and mine.”

Silence. Finally Crowley said, “If this is you thinking I can be redeemed by the power of love or something, _don’t_. That’s not how it works. It’s like an amputated limb; it’s not going to grow back, not even with the most miraculous miracle and no matter how much anyone might love me or… vice-versa.”

“No, no, that isn’t what I meant at all! That would be… that would be trying to change who you are, no different from what you thought the Archangels wanted to do. That’s not what I was getting at.”

“Then what,” demanded Crowley, “Is your point?”

“My point…” His point was going to require draining his second glass of whiskey, which he did. “My point is this. You may have closed yourself off, but I haven’t. Perhaps if we tried it, you would know me, even if I couldn’t know you – which is perfectly fine. No, I mean, more than fine. I mean, I would like that. To share my whole self. With you. Regardless. Of anything else.”

Crowley stared at him unblinking, and then seemed to change his mind several times about what to say. “You said angels don’t do it anymore.”

“Doesn’t mean we can’t, I don’t think. We just… don’t, for some reason. I suppose we got too busy. That, or they’re all having essence-orgies up in Heaven and not inviting me, but I doubt it.”

“I expect it’d be difficult while attached to a body. Remember, we didn’t have those, back in the day, not like they are now, anyway.”

“Well, yes, I suppose one would have to keep one foot in the… body… all right, that's an utterly dysfunctional metaphor, but you know what I mean. I still think it could be done.”

Crowley shook his head. “Seems awfully risky, specially for something so one-sided.”

Aziraphale frowned. Usually it was Crowley trying to talk _him_ into something risky, not the other way around. But then… _Come up with something, or I’ll never talk to you again_. “If Heaven and Hell really do come for us, we might never see each other again. I can’t stand the thought of you not knowing…”

“Aziraphale. Angel. I know you love me. It’s all right.”

“But there’s a difference between knowing and _knowing_.”

After an exasperated exhale, Crowley said quietly, “Look. You ought to know me well enough already to know that of course if it were possible, if it was _you_ , I’d jump at the chance. I’m only being difficult because I know it’s not going to work. If I can’t sense God’s love, I’m not going to be able to sense your essence, either, no matter how much you open yourself up. The closing-off goes both ways. I made a choice, angel. I have to live with it.”

Aziraphale poured them each a third glass. There was another long silence.

“I’d still love to know who blabbed to Milton,” said Crowley.

“Oh. I’m afraid that was my fault. I may have had a bit too much to drink during the Reformation. He got it all wrong, anyway.”

“Not entirely wrong. ‘… _nor restrained conveyance need, As flesh to mix with flesh, or soul with soul_ …’ That _is_ how it was.”

“How do you even know Milton? You don’t read books.”

Crowley shrugged. “I read that part.”

“‘Restrained conveyance,’” repeated Aziraphale. “Makes it sound so limiting. I _like_ having a body. It’s fun.”

“Does have its benefits. Not so much when someone’s stabbing you with a pitchfork, but--”

“Wait,” said Aziraphale, his hand absently touching Crowley’s upper arm to stop him talking. “Maybe that’s the solution. We have bodies.”

Crowley raised an eyebrow, probably because that thought had taken him somewhere different from where it had taken Aziraphale, but Aziraphale didn’t care. It was his turn to stand and pace around, his thoughts moving too quickly for speech. “Bodies. Adam didn’t give me a new body; he restored my old one, just the way it was. We’ve been writing ourselves onto these bodies, onto flesh and physical consciousnesses, for six thousand years. And brain matter is just… atoms. Matter. We manipulate matter all the time; it’s what we were made to do.”

“If you ever bothered to watch television you’d know that humans already thought up mind-melding a long time ago; there was this popular series about a spaceship captain and--”

Aziraphale wasn’t listening. “All I’m saying is, maybe a body doesn’t have to be an impediment. Maybe it’s actually exactly what we need in order to know each other. A sort of back door--” Crowley let out a tiny snort of laughter. “Oh, don’t be crass. You know what I mean. Our whole physical existence and physical consciousness is like… like a book. It’s not our essence itself, not perfect by any means, but the closest possible record… the clearest possible reflection. And _that_ , that, at least, we could share.”

Crowley sipped his drink.

“Well?” asked Aziraphale. “What do you think?”

“I think I’m trying my best not to be crass.”

Aziraphale rolled his eyes. “I suppose there _is_ always the human way of joining bodies. They do seem to find it enjoyable.”

With obvious regret, Crowley let his wry expression drop into seriousness and shook his head. “Not that I’d be opposed generally, but under the circumstances I think it’d be more of a distraction than a help.”

“Yes, I think so, too. Some other time, perhaps. So it’s just a matter of… matter.”

“I never could deny you anything,” shrugged Crowley. He held out a hand toward Aziraphale.

Aziraphale, not taking it, felt his brows draw together. “That’s not a good enough reason. If you don’t actually _want_ to--”

“Oh, for all that’s damned, do you really think I don’t want to know you in any way I can?”

“And to be known?”

“You’re worth it.”

Aziraphale still hesitated.

“Also,” said Crowley, “I trust you.”

Aziraphale took his hand.

It started with what was, for Aziraphale, a somewhat dull exploration of atomic bonds, as they felt out exactly how the substance of their bodies was put together, because they both knew they had to be careful, and determine together what was fragile and what could safely be taken apart to look inside.

But then he became more aware of Crowley’s thoughts, as they were written into his physical vessel, and he realized that atoms weren’t dull to Crowley at all. Crowley delighted in the whirling, chaotic order of Creation on its smallest scale, just as much as he delighted in the vastness of the stars. He loved what atoms did; the pure, raw energy of combustion, the hardness of metal, the mutability of liquid. Time and space gave scope for a constant, exhilarating state of flux, if only one was able to perceive it.

And cells, the way atoms built up into cells, microcosms of life, swirling with energy, the twisting, coiling, snake-dance of the cosmos, of DNA, of the fabric of reality… Aziraphale had never fully appreciated how beautiful it all was.

And so Crowley’s physical self was always in flux, always seeking new ways to express outwardly whatever mode he’d spiraled himself into inside; different cuts of clothes, different hair, different versions of the dark glasses he used to shield himself from giving away too much… And gender, _gender_ , what a banquet of delicious opportunities for self-expression _that_ offered! Aziraphale had always taken the path of least resistance on that front, but Crowley _reveled_ in shedding one skin for another.

It was all so breathtaking that Aziraphale felt his own stable, comfortable preoccupations to be terribly mundane by comparison. But Crowley nudged at him affectionately, the same way he seemed to like watching Aziraphale eat, and with further exploration managed to draw out the truth that Aziraphale preferred his body to be soft because he really hadn’t liked fighting, even if he was inexplicably good at it. And there was no reason his body _had_ to reflect, the way a human body would, his enjoyment of cakes and crepes and sushi and wine and cocoa, not to mention all the peaceful sitting with books and music, but he wanted his physical form to show how much he loved those things, how happy they made him, and so it did.

And from there he drifted into sharing his delight in music and language, the awestruck wonder of the first time he’d heard humans speak, the first time he’d heard them _sing_ , how they’d made musical instruments and exquisite sounds he never could have imagined, and then, ingenious as they were, they’d devised ways to _write down_ their speech and stories and sound, so that it could be preserved across time and distance, stored up like treasure and enjoyed even after its originators were gone.

Humans were brilliant.

Crowley agreed, but his opinions of human brilliance ranged across a broader spectrum. They were brilliant at art and at making new things, but they were also brilliant at making each other suffer, far more than any demon ever could. After witnessing centuries of physical torture, of psychological manipulation, of brutal slavery in all its forms, and of apathy that contributed far more to suffering than did intent, the torments of Hell seemed nothing in comparison with what humans could do to each other, sometimes by doing nothing at all.

And Aziraphale, who was in no way ignorant of human suffering, realized that it must look very different to a being who could not sense love, compared to one who could. Because he did weep, with eyes and heart, every time he bore witness to human pain and injustice, but he also had the enormous privilege of knowing, beyond any doubt, that love was so, so much bigger than both.

Which naturally sounded sanctimonious to Crowley, but he also understood, in theory, anyway. Because, though Crowley would never say it out loud, Aziraphale’s absolute confidence in divine love was probably the only thing that had kept Crowley sane for six millennia of watching humans suffer.

And Aziraphale wordlessly confessed that without Crowley’s witness to humanity’s pain -- without Crowley’s embittered compassion, which could only come from a being who, like the humans, didn’t get to spend every day wrapped in the surety of God’s love -- human suffering would be just as easy for Aziraphale to brush off as it was for the other angels.

They’d both known for ages how badly they needed each other, but never so much as now.

Somehow that recognition led them into trading memories of all their long history together, from the Garden wall to the Apocalypse that wasn't. Aziraphale saw himself through Crowley’s eyes, heard his own voice in Crowley’s ears, and it was so resonant, so serene; he had no idea he sounded like that. He hadn’t known that Crowley had only taken a humanlike form for the first time after seeing Aziraphale on the wall, all gentle limbs and shining face, and during their whole first conversation Crowley had been struggling not to show how close he was to falling over on those unfamiliar legs; the first unbalanced step he ever took on human feet was under Aziraphale’s wing.

And all those centuries of back-and-forth, of attraction and anxiety, of Aziraphale’s millstone of _guilt_ \-- guilt over what seemed like a betrayal of Heaven, alongside equal guilt over how much he’d kept someone who loved him at arm’s length… The pure clarity of that moment, after the bomb fell and the books were preserved, when he knew he didn’t just love in return, but was _in_ love... And Crowley had known all of that already, of course, but it was such a relief to look at it together with no more veneer of denial, everything out in the open.

And on it went, whole universes of experience and thought written into the bodies they’d carried through it all, now meshed together like the pages of two interleaved books. Time went on around them, inside them, a whole night spent in revelation.

And perhaps they could have stayed like that forever, but they did love the world, too, and knew better than to leave themselves too vulnerable to the impending consequences of that love. If the forces of Heaven and Hell found them like this, defenseless… it didn’t bear thinking.

So they let go of each other, for the time being, anyway, and settled back into separate bodies.

It was morning outside, and Aziraphale was thinking a cup of tea would be just the thing. He opened his mouth to say so and heard Crowley’s voice saying “Would you--” only it was in the wrong place somehow, and then he looked down and saw a pile of dark angles he wasn’t expecting. His own body was on the other side of the sofa, looking at its hand in not-displeased bemusement.

It seemed they’d lost track of which body was which.

“Oh,” laughed Aziraphale out of Crowley’s throat. “Oh, dear. We really are incompetent, sometimes.”

“Or too competent,” mused Crowley in Aziraphale’s voice.

They looked at themselves through each other’s non-metaphorical eyes.

“Well, easy enough to swap back,” said Aziraphale, extending a hand.

“No, wait,” said Crowley. “I have an idea.”


End file.
